Simone Giertz Will Undergo Radiation Therapy To Treat Brain Tumor Recurrence

One of the YouTube community’s most beloved science creators must forge onward in her battle against a brain tumor.

Simone Giertz, who announced that she would undergo surgery for a benign mass last April and returned to her channel after a successful procedure in July, shared a somber update with her 1.4 million subscribers on Friday.

“It just feels like a bad movie sequel,” Giertz said. The 28-year-old explained that, during her first procedure, doctors didn’t remove portions of the tumor — which she nicknamed Brian — because they were located in areas that were too difficult to operate on. While Giertz knew there was a chance that the mass might require further attention down the line, “The ‘line’ in ‘down the line’ was a little bit shorter than I had anticipated,” she says (see below), “because it’s only been eight months.”

On the bright side, Giertz won’t have to undergo another surgery, but instead will be treated with radiation over the next six weeks in order to damage the tumor and ward off future growth. While radiation therapy has a 90% success rate, she says, the treatment also involves some potentially scary side effects, including blindness, loss of hearing and hair, and dementia. Giertz says that she hopes to keep her channel active throughout the process, but doesn’t know how radiation will impact her ability to work.

“I’m sick of being sick, and I have so many plans and projects I want to build,” she says. “I’ve been really reluctant to make this video because I don’t want to be brain tumor girl. I don’t want this to be my thing. I want to be bad-ass builder girl who can build whatever she wants and does random projects and goes to space.”